rn off in some degree; she read less, and her thoughts
took the habit of musing upon the people and circumstances about her,
also upon the secrets of the years to come. She grew more conscious of
the mystery in her own earlier life, and in the conditions which now
surrounded her. A sense which at times besets all imaginative minds
came upon her now and then with painful force; a fantastic unreality
would suddenly possess all she saw and heard; it seemed as if she had
been of a sudden transported out of the old existence into this new and
unrealised position; if any person spoke to her, it was difficult to
feel that she was really addressed and must reply; was it not all a
mere vision she was beholding, out of which she would presently awake!
Such moments were followed by dark melancholy. This life she was
leading could not last, but would pass away in some fearful shock of
soul. Once she half believed herself endowed with the curse of a
hideous second-sight. Sitting with her father and mother, silence all
at once fell upon the room, and everything was transfigured in a
ghostly light. Distinctly she saw her mother throw her head back and
raise to her throat what seemed to be a sharp, glistening piece of
steel; then came a cry, and all was darkened before her eyes in a rush
of crimson mist. The cry she had herself uttered, much to her parents'
alarm; what her mother held was in reality only a paper-knife, with
which she had been tapping her lips in thought. A slight attack of
illness followed on this disturbance, and it was some days before she
recovered from the shock; she kept to herself, however, the horrible
picture which her imagination had conjured up.

She began to pay more frequent visits to her aunt Theresa, whom at
first she had seen very seldom. There was not the old confidence
between them. Maud shrank from any direct reference to the change in
herself, and Miss Bygrave spoke no word which could suggest a
comparison between past and present. Maud tried once more to draw near
to the pale, austere woman, whose life ever remained the same. She was
not repelled, but neither did any movement respond to her yearning. She
always came away with a sad heart.

One evening in the week she looked forward to with eagerness; it was
that on which Waymark was generally expected. In Waymark's presence she
could forget those dark spirits that hovered about her; she could
forget herself, and be at rest in the contemplation of s